She weaves her riveting tale to give her fragile daughter a reason to live, even as her own strength wanes. Wollstonecraft’s urgent story of loss and triumph forms the heartbreakingly brief intersection between the lives of a mother and daughter who will change the arc of history and thought. In radiant prose, Samantha Silva delivers an ode to the dazzling life of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the world's most influential thinkers and mother of the famous novelist Mary Shelley. But at its heart, Love and Fury is a story about the power of a woman reclaiming her own narrative to pass on to her daughter, and all daughters, for generations to come.
Silva skillfully portrays the remarkable life of a remarkable woman: Mary Wollstonecraft ... Silva’s grasp of the craft of historical fiction is impressive; she’s attentive to details of late 18th-century life as well as emotional authenticity. Recommend this novel to fans of historical fiction featuring strong women, especially those interested in the roots of feminism.
... stirring and occasionally hagiographic episodes ... While the novel is decidedly an homage it is also a study of false steps and evolving ideas ... The confidences between the women are the most purely imagined in the novel and also the most moving, and they help us understand what another character means when he tells Mary, 'You make everyone’s world bigger.'
... told in a series of short chapters, alternating Wollstonecraft’s memories with Parthenia’s experience of caring for the ill woman and new baby. Silva’s attention to period detail creates a heartbreaking novel of compassion and grace, as well as an elegy to one of the world’s most influential thinkers.
Silva succeeds in making Wollstonecraft a vibrant and forceful personality, full of both love and fury ... her wonder at Wollstonecraft can sometimes seem heavy-handed, and Mrs. B — her story, the voice Silva gives her — is not as compelling as Wollstonecraft. It is in Wollstonecraft’s own sections, when she relates her life in chronological order, that the story most comes alive ... This is a lot of life to cover in roughly 200 pages. The later sections of the novel can feel a little rushed, in part because the backdrop is so huge. The French Revolution, for instance, deserves more than the 25 pages Silva is able to give to Wollstonecraft’s more than two years in France ... But the earlier sections move more slowly, and Silva paints a convincing portrait of a girl finding her way in the world — learning to trust her own feelings of injustice, unearthing a world of intellect and ideas via a friend’s father ... vivid, flawed, larger than life. Silva gives us a Wollstonecraft who is not overshadowed by historical forces, but who is instead herself a force of nature — and history.
This book was rough going in places as Mary had a difficult life ... And yet I did not find the book to be depressing. Rather, I found myself exhilarated by all Mary did with her life, and more fond than ever of this stubborn, passionate, brilliant, frustrating woman ... Do not let the short length of the book fool you – it’s not a light read due to the multiple traumas depicted or alluded to in the book. However, it’s a rewarding portrait of a flawed and fabulous person.
A fictionalized biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering 18th-century feminist and radical thinker who was the mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley ... Silva frames the novel as the dying woman's recounting of her life story to her infant ... While Silva works hard to fit in all the details of Wollstonecraft’s life with accuracy, the most moving moments belong to her fictitious midwife, kindly Mrs. Blenkinsop. Her intermittent narration of Wollstonecraft’s last weeks is meant to provide a workingwoman’s adoring view of Wollstonecraft and her domestic life with Godwin but also reveals the midwife’s private grief and spiritual growth. Silva’s strong visual language enhances an otherwise matter-of-fact retelling of Wollstonecraft’s brief, eventful life.
[A] gripping, meticulous novel ... Short chapters written from pragmatic Blenkinsop’s perspective balance Wollstonecraft’s turbulent story and evoke the class differences as well as the commonalities between the era’s women. Silva’s heartbreaking but inspiring work captures the despair and joy, convictions and contradictions of an extraordinary woman.
